The worst job at Google: hunting for child porn, beheading videos

Google contractors in charge of removing illegal content also have to watch it.

"Bestiality, necrophilia…body mutilations… explicit fetishes (like diaper porn)" are just a few of the things a Google employee saw while monitoring the company's products for unsavory content, according to a piece at BuzzFeed FWD. The employee says Google usually hires contractors to those positions, so workers are offered no benefits or emotional support to unwind from the twisted sights wrought by the Internet.

"Child porn is the biggest thing for tech companies," writes the employee. US law dictates it must be taken down within 24 hours of notice and reported to federal authorities. Unsurprisingly, the position responsible for tracking, verification, and removal of such material isn't a coveted one on the Google campus. According to the piece at FWD, Google commonly hires people to do that dirty work on contracts of a year or less; they have the potential to be hired full-time after that, but many are simply cut loose.

The author of the piece notes that Google covered one session of therapy, and encouraged him to continue attending (without Google's financial support). But after nine months on the contract, the author was told his contract would expire, rather than roll into a full-time position. While the lack of support for employees traversing the darkest corners of the Internet is disturbing, we wouldn't wish an open-ended full-time job in that field on our worst foes.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

There seems to be no depths Google will stoop to if they think it's in their best interest.

Obviously they have begun to believe their own hype about how much better Google is than anyone else.

Yeah, don't be evil, be eviler.

I have a friend who was tasked by Army Intelligence to investigate US Air Force pilots in Israel who were trading in kiddie porn. It was an horrendous job to take on, and he felt the effects for years afterwards. I concur that this is not a job that anyone should be given for a long period of time, but for Google to hire someone to do it, and not offer the proper amount of support is no doubt the grounds for a major lawsuit in the future. And if I'm on the jury, you can bet I would by more sympathetic to the worker than Google is.

I was in the petrochemical field for several years and witnessed the transition from full-time laboratory workers to contract laboratory workers, incidentally at approximately the same time that workplace cancer suits on behalf of the full-time laboratory workers were really beginning to ramp up. Depending upon the nature of what was being manufactured at the petrochemical plant was generally the nature of which cancers the full-time laboratory workers were being diagnosed. Some plants seemed to consistently produce a type or two of cancer over any other cancers. Other plants, other cancers seemed to be more prevalent.

So, bring on the "contract workers."

Whilst talking with one of the "contract" laboratory workers, he said that he worked at one plant for a while and then at another plant for a while and then at another plant for a while...and...you get the idea.

The "genius" of the plant management was as follows: From which plant did one acquire one's cancer(s)?

Devastating from a lawsuit point of view, eh?

Likewise, so it'll go with the "contract" workers for various IT organizations: From which IT organization did you acquire your PTSD or child porn addiction, plaintiff?

Trust me buddy, these things stay with you. Once you have seen evil, it never leaves you. It always comes to haunt you and it changes you forever.

That's how I felt after watching Mulholland Drive.

I don't think an R-rated movie is nearly in the same category as child porn and snuff film (wikipedia). Personally I was only mildly unsettled (and of course thoroughly confused) after seeing Mulholland Drive.

IIRC the FBI's developed automated tools to do this sort of filtering for their CP investigations. Being able to stomp most of it automatically would cut down on the human cost involved in screening it out.

I was in the petrochemical field for several years and witnessed the transition from full-time laboratory workers to contract laboratory workers, incidentally at approximately the same time that workplace cancer suits on behalf of the full-time laboratory workers were really beginning to ramp up. Depending upon the nature of what was being manufactured at the petrochemical plant was generally the nature of which cancers the full-time laboratory workers were being diagnosed. Some plants seemed to consistently produce a type or two of cancer over any other cancers. Other plants, other cancers seemed to be more prevalent.

So, bring on the "contract workers."

Whilst talking with one of the "contract" laboratory workers, he said that he worked at one plant for a while and then at another plant for a while and then at another plant for a while...and...you get the idea.

The "genius" of the plant management was as follows: From which plant did one acquire one's cancer(s)?

Devastating from a lawsuit point of view, eh?

Likewise, so it'll go with the "contract" workers for various IT organizations: From which IT organization did you acquire your PTSD or child porn addiction, plaintiff?

Equally devastating from a lawsuit point of view, eh?

I would probably prefer a better benefits package, but in this case, I'd think that it's more unethical to have someone do this job for multiple years. I would similarly think that such an issue might be better for those working with petrochemicals as well, although shifting an employee amongst jobs at different companies with the same level of health concern doesn't seem to provide an advantage.

I have a friend who was tasked by Army Intelligence to investigate US Air Force pilots in Israel who were trading in kiddie porn. It was an horrendous job to take on, and he felt the effects for years afterwards. I concur that this is not a job that anyone should be given for a long period of time, but for Google to hire someone to do it, and not offer the proper amount of support is no doubt the grounds for a major lawsuit in the future. And if I'm on the jury, you can bet I would by more sympathetic to the worker than Google is.

Why CID? This is actually OSI's wheelhouse and USAF personnel investigations are their responsibility. I would have ducked that assignment on those grounds alone.

As for suing Google...who knows. Those things are a toss-up. It depends on how tight the contract itself was and whether you can get two psychiatrists to agree on anything.

Blegh. At a law firm, I once had to read through a transcript of a complete set of IM's between a woman and a guy she was having a cyber-affair with. I felt like I needed a shower after just a few hours of that. I couldn't imagine sifting through photos for months at a time.

You need to find people who simply don't care about anything to do this job. It's the mindset used to choose concentration camp guards. They don't have a be really into the cause, just indifferent and oblivious to the world.

These people aren't fun to be around, most of us try to ignore them, but I know from experience that they exist.

I think my sister did something similar for a Microsoft contractor in England. Something about checking entries people would send Microsoft to appear on one of their sites, or in certain Bing search results.

She was happy enough to keep the job but happy enough when they downsized and she was able to leave with severance pay.

You need to find people who simply don't care about anything to do this job. It's the mindset used to choose concentration camp guards. They don't have a be really into the cause, just indifferent and oblivious to the world.

These people aren't fun to be around, most of us try to ignore them, but I know from experience that they exist.

hopefully behind bars or very thick padding by the time i run into them

i don't think people like that should be allowed access to such material unless they are securely chained to a concrete desk

I'd like to think I'd be though-skinned enough to shrug this sort of thing off, especially if the pay were good (probably isn't), but being constantly subjected to that kind of material is quite a bit different from watching one of the highly publicized terrorist beheading videos once. Which doesn't seem to have affected my day to day demeanor, it just makes me more likely to not take a cruise to the middle east.

The pay would have to be a whole hell of a lot and offer some form of job security before I've ever consider it. Like a "set for life after just a few years on the job" amount. You can't unsee things once you've seen them.

1. Get incarcerated pedophiles to train pigeons to recognize child porn. Training for beheadings would be good too.2. Throw away the key.3. Place pigeons in a jail cell playing videos all day to flag the videos.4. Throw away the key. (We don’t need flying pedophiles)

I have a friend who was tasked by Army Intelligence to investigate US Air Force pilots in Israel who were trading in kiddie porn. It was an horrendous job to take on, and he felt the effects for years afterwards. I concur that this is not a job that anyone should be given for a long period of time, but for Google to hire someone to do it, and not offer the proper amount of support is no doubt the grounds for a major lawsuit in the future. And if I'm on the jury, you can bet I would by more sympathetic to the worker than Google is.

Why CID? This is actually OSI's wheelhouse and USAF personnel investigations are their responsibility. I would have ducked that assignment on those grounds alone.

As for suing Google...who knows. Those things are a toss-up. It depends on how tight the contract itself was and whether you can get two psychiatrists to agree on anything.

There may have been a potential conflict of interest along the way and the AF asked the Army to step in for safety valve reasons. I recall when I was in the Navy a friend of mine who worked for NCIS was asked to check into something at Ramstein because one of the potential suspects was related to an OSI bigwig.

You need to find people who simply don't care about anything to do this job. It's the mindset used to choose concentration camp guards. They don't have a be really into the cause, just indifferent and oblivious to the world.

These people aren't fun to be around, most of us try to ignore them, but I know from experience that they exist.

hopefully behind bars or very thick padding by the time i run into them

i don't think people like that should be allowed access to such material unless they are securely chained to a concrete desk

You might want to read the quoted post more carefully. Why would people that can shrug off horrors be a threat to society? To a lesser extent, these kinds of qualities are needed for veterinarians, doctors, EMTs, firemen, etc. Now, this particular job has a lot less glorification, but it still requires putting up the same kind of shell.

It would have been good to have gotten a comment from Google about how much of this sort of filtering they feel they can do automatically, say, by image recognition and other smarts they've already built into their search technologies.

A long time ago I applied for a job with the NJSP, and one of the questions was "Do you have a problem viewing child porn?" It took me a while to try and come up with an answer that wouldn't exclude me from a shot at the job, but also wasn't potentially self-incriminating. I think my response was something like if it had the potential of aiding in a successful prosecution, then no.

Still not sure if that response was what killed my chances or not. Oh well.